Germany’s new historical debt

Aufarbeitung and Vergangenheitsbewältigung are German political terms that have shaped postwar history studies and found their way into international academia, roughly translating to the thorough analysis of a past historical event.

Germany was once considered a leading country in coming to terms with its particularly horrendous Third Reich past and the Holocaust, where 6 million Jews were killed and tortured. Since Germany’s reunification, numerous books and documentaries relating to new angles and aspects of the Nazis’ ascent and demise have emerged almost every year.

Growing up in Germany, my first visit to a concentration camp, Sachsenhausen, took place when I was merely 9 years old. I remember one horrified schoolmate pointing out a pile of straw in one of the barracks we visited, assuming with a nauseated expression that it still bears the blood of real humans.

At a later age, when we were given history assignments in class, another German student gave a presentation about World War II. The shock of discovering his country's past was marked on his face: the marking of Jewish people prior to their deportation, the systematic deportation of Jews trapped for weeks in freezing train wagons, the starvation of millions of innocent civilians, the unlivable and gruesome conditions of the concentration camps, and then the indescribable horrors of the death camps, the industrial killing and the brutal squashing of the Warsaw Ghetto. It is a gruesome past, the kind that shapes one’s identity.

Yet, this historical debt was always given as an excuse to defend Israel's onslaught on Palestinian lives by both right-wing sympathizers and liberal leftists who would vote for the progressive Greens and the Social Democrats. This archetypal German stance was not altered by the unprecedented death toll and destruction in Gaza since the Nakba, a stance that might not only be rooted in Germany’s past of historical debt, but also in anti-Muslim sentiment.

Only by the end of March, after more than 32,000 Palestinians had been killed, did Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party call for an immediate ceasefire. Before that, Germany announced its intention to defend Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case filed by South Africa, accusing Israel of violating the Genocide Convention. After Israel claimed, in tandem with the ICJ ruling, that staff members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the main provider of aid to Palestinian refugees, were involved in the October 7 attacks, Germany and more than 10 countries initially suspended their funding to the organization. Of course, Israel’s allegations against UNRWA garnered much more attention from the German media at the time than the ICJ ruling itself.

On the street, German riot police took on the same archetypal German stance with their own hands and arms, systematically crushing many pro-Palestine demonstrations, denying protest permits, and attacking and arresting protesters, especially those holding signs deemed controversial, like “Jews against Genocide,” for example. Most recently, armed police forces in Berlin interrupted the Palestine Congress, banned it, denied entry to speakers, and threatened them with prison sentences and fines if they participated online. Several Jewish pro-Palestinian speakers at the Congress were arrested.

The German stance became manifest in different German parties’ statements, signaling a dangerous political alignment. Third-generation post-World War II politicians, whose grandparents were involved in the war, have dogmatized and internalized an unshakable way to defend “successors” of Holocaust survivors from a “second extinction,” washing off their own indelible guilt. Robert Habeck, vice chancellor of the Green Party, reiterated that Israel's security is within German Staatsräson, or raison d’état, as the generation of his great parents wanted to obliterate Jewish life. In a video speech, he emotionally condemned the surge of anti-Semitism in Germany, attacks on synagogues, the burning of Israeli flags and anyone siding with Hamas.

Even Die Linke, Germany's leftist party, swerved very far right, as Jan Korte criticized Egypt for not opening the border and called on Baerbock to apply pressure on Egypt. “In no other conflict in the world would the infringement on the Geneva Refugee Convention be accepted like that, to prevent refugees from fleeing to safe spaces,” he said while calling on the UN, EU and Arab states to take in refugees from Gaza.

Instead of criticizing Israel for killing thousands of children, destroying universities and hospitals, starving two million civilians, having Israeli ministers make public calls for Palestinians’ voluntary emigration from Gaza or for nuking Gaza, labeling two million Palestinians as Nazis, and disclosing new settlement plans for Gaza, Korte held everyone else but Israel responsible.

As for the German media, they took liberty in acting as the Israeli military's mythomaniac spokesperson at times, signaling a dangerous threat to the practice of journalism. Netanyahu’s accusations against UNRWA were framed by the German media exactly like how Arab state-aligned newspapers would handle precise editorial instructions from their state security apparatus.

German Israeli Arye Sharuz Shelicar, an Israeli military spokesperson and a much appreciated guest in German media despite his genocidal rhetoric, is seen rubbing shoulders with Habeck and Baerbock, who, since the war, have repeatedly rushed to have their pictures taken with him, generally flushed with a huge supportive smile. Both are seen laughing in a video recorded at a Central Council of Jews in Germany event celebrating Baerbock's birthday. Shelicar was dressed in military uniform in the middle of a jolly crowd, singing and drinking. A few weeks later, Shelicar went so far as to post a Nazi swastika in Palestinian colors, beaten by an Israeli fist, commenting, “Never again is now. Come what may.”

Die Welt, a daily German newspaper published by far-right media conglomerate Axel Springer SE, who owns Bild, the highest circulation tabloid newspaper in Germany, has made it a hobby to vilify Palestinian civilians, getting away with it through an overtly cowardly consensus that aligns German public opinion under a supposition that Palestinians in Gaza “bear children for the war on Jews.” German journalist Alan Posener writes, “The birth rate in Gaza is among the highest in the world. For 17 years, Hamas has been calling on women there to have more children so that they never run out of supplies for the terrorist troops.”

Bild’s typical coverage of pro-Palestine protests looks like this: a picture of two Arab women, unveiled, under a headline reading: Germany's new Islamists, and the subhead: young, perfect German, branded clothing. Several other publications have been competing with Bild and Welt in their Palestine-phobia. “The Jews or the Aggro — a derogatory colloquial term meaning someone who is aggressive and violent — Arabs. To whom should we stick?” This was one of numerous media lows that went unchallenged in German public discourse. A few months later, the esteemed author of the article was invited to Germany’s most established literary program to discuss his favorite book.

German media’s dissemination of Israeli propaganda is in line with the all-too-hysteric Islamophobic remarks and proclamations disseminated daily by German politicians, as Germany's so-called Staatsräson seems to be deeply rooted in its anti-Islamic sentiment. German politicians are quite openly using the genocidal self-defense of Israel in order to settle the score with the migrant Muslim ordeal.

In his article for Qantara, Love to Israel or hatred to Muslims, German journalist Stefan Buchen wonders if the Saxony-Anhalt decree stipulating that those applying for German citizenship must recognize Israel's right to exist in order to become naturalized citizens — delivered by Minister President Reiner Haselhoff of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) — is not primarily destined to foster anti-Muslim sentiments.

In an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF, Saxony Minister President Michael Kretschmer of the CDU stated contemptuously that “the kind” of refugees coming to Germany is of vital importance. He does not mean Ukrainians when speaking of immigrants who “cannot make a contribution here because, indeed, from their education standard, they do not have the capability to work in this scientific country… We cannot let all these people in the country and then complain that Israeli flags are being burned. What kind of politics is that? We need to wake up!”

When Chancellor Olaf Scholz woke up two months later, he declared that he was shocked by a secret Nazi meeting plotting to deport millions of foreigners. Yet it was Scholz himself who stated prior to this meeting, “We have to deport now on a grand scale.” Quite openly, far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) parliamentarian Renee Springer commented after this secret meeting in which two members of the CDU participated, “We will deport foreigners back to their countries. That is not a secret plan. It is a promise.” CDU's Hans-Georg Maaßen, ex-president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, described foreigners from foreign cultures as a cancer to Germany. Like Springer and Maaßen, German politicians have stopped trying to embellish their long-term loath and open contempt for Muslim refugees and migrants.

Currently, AFD is exploiting the vilification of Palestinians to attract xenophobic voters. Why vote for wannabe right-wingers when you have the original? AFD already started to take over mayor elections, as in Saxony or entire states in East or West Germany.

With the plan to form a new leftist party, Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht intends to recap the stolen votes AFD snatched from failed leftists by disseminating their own greenish cocktail of leftist environmental policies blended with a healthy German obsolete-but-never-out-of-fashion mix of anti-migrant sentiments. As German writer Emily Dische-Becker dishes out, the anti-migrant political agenda has been numerously set or laid down by the AFD, and centrist and leftist parties have been scrambling to take on and reclaim those causes for themselves.

All of this should not come as a big surprise, given how migrants and refugees have been permanently targeted by the far right ever since the record-high influx of more than one million asylum seekers in Germany in 2015. But all of this is also testimony to how an ideological stance can become a mere instrument in electoral politics.

How come none of this encountered any serious resistance by Germany's bulwark of German intellectuals? How come, when Ghassan Hage was fired from the prestigious Max Planck Institute and defamed as anti-Semitic in German yellow papers, despite dozens of Israeli scholars rushing to his defense, no other German academic objected? But to be fair, a light breeze of change is blowing against Germany’s dense, gray clouds, as recently, more than 250 German scholars and academics denounced Germany’s stance on the conflict.

Despite German politicians leading the cancellation machine, its effectiveness lies in the silence of the public, in particular those who used to usually speak out in Germany when matters got worse, like Germany's well-established intellectual scene.

In her talk with the Dig Podcast, Dische-Becker offers eye-opening insight regarding the formation of Germany's new identity, carved out since reunification. Dische-Becker argues that the new pro-Israel, pro-United States anti-Islamic German sentiment was influential in shaping a new modern German identity obsessed with purist and symbolic politics, politics of guilt, and identification with memory culture as the main avenue for ensuring that Germany remains committed to a democracy.

This particular German contemporary arrival to its democracy is what puts us in front of a spectacle where only German politicians hold the monopoly of discerning anti-Semitism — they are the experts; they exert a high dogma mentality that grants them superior power. Without their ultimate protection, Germany would fall back into Nazism and crumble like last time.

So-called anti anti-Semitic commissioners, most of them not Jews, have been appointed in each state. Berlin alone boasts five commissioners, who, since the passing of a resolution in 2019, have deemed any activities by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign as anti-Semitic, making it their quest to thoroughly inspect social media for suspects of what they deem as anti-Semitism.

Most ironic is the fact that even Jewish pro-Palestinian voices are being canceled. Marione Ingram, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, had a scheduled event in Hamburg postponed due to her speaking out against the war on Gaza. “It is surprising to me that Germany has chosen to silence me. But I think the worst part of it is that they are silencing young people,” said Ingram. As the Social Democratic Party (SPD) intends to revoke the German nationality of anti-Semites, the German-Jewish author of Unorthodox, Deborah Feldmann, expects that, one day, hers will be revoked as well for criticizing Netanyahu. Feldmann has already been viciously attacked and libeled for her criticism of Israel and showing solidarity with Palestinians.

Sharon Dodua Otoo, a German-British-Nigerian author whose first novel, Adas Raum, revolved around a reincarnated heroine personified as a Jewish female prisoner in a concentration camp, was supposed to receive the German Peter Weiss Prize in early 2024. A German McCarthyist paper discovered that she signed a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) motion in 2014, leading the award committee to cancel Otoo’s prize. 

Eva Menasse, an Austrian Jewish writer and speaker of PEN Berlin, issued a statement objecting to the hysterical monitoring of artists’ political actions. Consequently, Menasse was attacked by many German intellectuals, including historian Ernst Piper, who wrote on his Facebook account of Menasse's self-aggrandizing contempt.

Yet Otoo did not need Menasse's defense. The following day, she issued her condemnation of Hamas’ October 7 attack and apologized for signing the BDS letter by British artists for Palestine in 2014, stating that she would not sign such a motion today. Otoo pointed out that she has “always been here, especially in Germany, for a dialogue” and expressed gratitude for being made aware of her “mistakes.”

What was so shocking about Otoo's case was the amount of intimidation that led an established black writer whose first accomplished novel dealt with the Holocaust, who writes adamantly about racial discrimination in Germany, to cave just one day after the Hetzjagd — i.e., being hounded by German self-appointed moralists — to the point that she had to distance herself from a nonviolent motion she signed ten years ago.

The sheer fact that 30 percent of canceled artists were Jewish is in itself anti-Semitic, in old German fashion.

Candice Breitz had an exhibition and talk canceled for her criticism of Israel. Masha Gessen, who was supposed to be awarded the Hannah Arendt Prize, was canceled as well. Arendt herself had vehemently criticized Israel's treatment of Arabs, and according to her biographer, Samantha Hill, she herself would not be qualified for the German Hannah Arendt Prize today.

In the New Yorker article “In the Shadow of the Holocaust,” Gessen had done the unthinkable by comparing Gaza to a Jewish ghetto during World War II, thus equating what Israel was doing to Palestinians to what the Nazis did to Jews. The Green Party withdrew from the ceremony, and the city withdrew its venue. An open letter was published, calling for the award to be rescinded. CNN African American anchor Michel Martin asked Gessen afterwards in an interview, “In essence, they are calling you a descendant of Holocaust survivors, a Jewish thinker, a person who has been attacked by totalitarian governments before; basically, they are calling you anti-Semitic.” Gessen responded, “Yes, that is exactly what they are saying. And basically, that's what I was writing about in the piece. This anti anti-Semitic bureaucracy is run by non-Jews. And the people that they accuse of anti-Semitism are disproportionately Jews… I have doubts about how sincere they [Germany] are in their efforts to fight antisemitism.”

And, finally, Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham and Palestinian journalist Basel Adra won the Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Berlin International Film Festival. During their speeches, Adra demanded that Germany stop sending weapons to Israel, and Abraham explained the concept of apartheid to the audience. Afterward, German TV anchor Ingo Zamperoni asked the very dismayed German State Minister for Culture and Social Cohesion Joe Chialo what he would have considered an adequate response, not from the “perpetrators,” Abraham and Adra, as Zamperoni put it, but from the audience.

The unimaginable happened. The audience applauded the speech calling for peace, but both Abraham and Adra were denounced by every self-righteous German politician, and Abraham received death threats. The “investigative” Bild then published a picture of two prominent German politicians clapping at the festival: Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media Claudia Roth of the Green Party and Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner of the CDU. The next day, both were quick to condemn the “Israelfeindlichkeit,” hostility and hatred toward Israel, for which the Berlinale’s audience unfortunately clapped. Roth demanded “aufarbeitung,” coming to terms with the Israeli hate that took place during the event, and the culture and media ministry’s official X account issued a statement to clarify that Roth was only clapping for the Israeli artist.

Yet Wegner was much clearer in condemning anti-Semitism, expecting the new leadership of the Berlinale to avoid similar scenarios in the future, such as allowing artists to wear a Palestinian kufiya, declare that they are against the genocide, or demand a ceasefire.

Germany’s Staatsräson, in its relentless Philoisraeli quest to reject calls to stop genocide or mass killing, has epitomized real anti-Semitism. It is anti-Semitism defined, not as outlined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, to which Germany abides, but by the arrest and assault of Jewish activists, threatening them with prison, freezing Jewish Voice for Peace’s bank account and defaming the descendants of Holocaust survivors as anti-Semitic.

Thus, while Germany's high debt is steadily mounting with each German rocket and bullet fired and as its arm export to Israel has risen ten times since October 7, a selective and exclusive Never Again has proven to be, for some, an imperative recipe for the forlorn carnage of thousands of massacred Palestinians. At the same time, Jewish and non-Jewish pro-Palestinian protesters are being silenced and canceled for making too much noise, while the innocent perish in silence in Germany’s Staatsräson.